The pier is right next to Decks, which is where the Legoland Discovery Center and Takoyaki Museum are. Since we wouldn’t be able to reenter Legoland Center if we left, we decided to get an early lunch before going in. The Takoyaki Museum is not really a museum, but a row of retro shops and a food court at the end with stands selling only takoyaki (ball shaped snacks made with batter and has octopus (tako) inside). Near the entrance are some old arcade machines and we let the kids play with a couple.
There was a store selling very cute little glass figurines.
We then wandered into a store selling “lucky boxes” (i.e. mystery boxes). I had heard about these in a TDR Explorer podcast. It’s a Japanese New Year’s custom for stores to sell these, so I was pleasantly surprised to find a store specializing in them. The ones with regular color wrapping paper (blue, red, green) were 300 yen, the gold colored ones were 1000 yen, and then there were a few bigger boxes that were 5000(!) yen. DD picked a 300 yen one (with the promise that she could get another small thing later) and got a well-made anime figurine of a girl (who or which anime I have no idea!). DS picked a 1000 yen one and got a model car. Some of the bigger prizes (it would be a ticket in the box not the actual thing) were a vacuum, a toaster, a Nintendo machine – this was what DS was hoping for. I was glad we didn’t get a vacuum or toaster! How would that fit in the luggage??
The food court had 6 takoyaki stands in kind of a “C” shape. I looked at all of them but couldn’t really figure out what the differences were, so just randomly picked two. In front of each stand, there is a ticket machine – put money in, press the button for the one you want, out pops a ticket to take to the cook at the stand. It’s all in Japanese, but somehow I was able to figure out which button was for the sampler plate. I can read Chinese (which is similar to kanji), so I think that helped. I recall the bigger buttons were for the sampler plate and sets.
We tried the third one, counting from the bottom of the “C”, which is where you enter the food court. All the takoyaki were the same, the only difference being the topping and sauce. They had the crispy rice coating the outside, making it crunchier and were quite good.
We also tried the fifth stall:
Here’s the sampler plate. The ones on the lower right corner are made entirely of egg. It tasted like steamed egg, creamy inside with a delicate shell. They were very unique and yummy, though not technically TAKOyaki….
Travels with 2 Kids 